I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of heart it is which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer I saw him pale and feverish. In thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice! - his children

But here my heart began to bleed and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground, upon a little straw in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap.

As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye toward the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter into his soul !

I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

THE SWORD.

When states and empires have their periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is, I stop not to tell the causes which gradually brought the house of d'E, in Brittany, into decay. The Marquess d'E- had fought up against his condition with great firmness; wishing to preserve and still show to the world some little fragments of what his ancestors had been: their indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of obscurity; but he had two boys who looked up to him for light; he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword it could not open the way- the mounting was too expensive and simple economy was not a match for it: there was no resource but commerce.

In any other province in France save Brittany this was smiting the root forever of the little tree his pride and affection

wished to see reblossom. But in Brittany, there being a provision for this, he availed himself of it; and taking an occasion when the states were assembled at Rennes, the Marquess, attended with his two boys, entered the court; and having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which, though seldom claimed, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from his side. "Here," said he, "take it; and be trusty guardians of it till better times put me in condition to reclaim it."

The president accepted the Marquess's sword; he stayed a few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house, and departed.

The Marquess and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico; and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlooked-for bequests from distant branches of his house, returned home to reclaim his nobility and to support it.

It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen to any traveler but a sentimental one that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition. I call it solemn it was so to me.

The Marquess entered the court with his whole family; he supported his lady, his eldest son supported his sister, and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother; he put his handkerchief to his face twice

There was a dead silence.

When the Marquess had approached within six paces of the tribunal he gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family, he reclaimed his sword. His sword was given him; and the moment he got it into his hand he drew it almost out of the scabbard - 'twas the shining face of a friend he had once given up; he looked attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same; when, observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it, I think I saw a tear fall upon the place. I could not be deceived by what followed.

"I shall find," said hc, "some other way to get it off."

When the Marquess had said this, he returned his sword into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, and with his wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walked

out.

Oh, how I envied him his feelings!

LETTERS OF JUNIUS.

(In the Public Advertiser, London.)

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

July 8, 1769.

MY LORD,If nature had given you an understanding qualified to keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart, she would have made you, perhaps, the most formidable minister that ever was employed under a limited monarch to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment form any bar to the designs of a minister, the people would have too much reason to lament their condition if they did not find some resource in the weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty of Providence that the completest depravity of the heart is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind which counteracts the most favorite principles, and makes the same man treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were adopted without skill, should have been conducted with more than common dexterity. But truly, my Lord, the execution has been as gross as the design. By one decisive step you have defeated all the arts of writing. You have fairly confounded the intrigues of opposition, and silenced the clamors of faction. A dark, ambiguous system might require and furnish the materials of ingenious illustration; and, in doubtful measures, the virulent exaggeration of party must be employed to rouse and engage the passions of the people. You have now brought the merits of your administration to an issue on which every Englishman of the narrowest capacity may determine for himself. It is not an alarm to the passions, but a calm appeal to the judgment of the people upon their own most essential interests. A more experienced minister would not have hazarded a direct invasion of the first principles of the constitution before he had made some progress in subduing the spirit of the people. With such a cause as yours, my Lord, it is not sufficient that you have the court at your devotion unless you can find means to corrupt or intimidate the jury.

The collective body of the people form that jury, and from their decision there is but one appeal.

Whether you have talents to support you at a crisis of such difficulty and danger should long since have been considered. Judging truly of your disposition, you have, perhaps, mistaken the extent of your capacity. Good faith and folly have so long been received for synonymous terms that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit, and every villain fancies himself a man of abilities. It is the apprehension of your friends, my Lord, that you have drawn some hasty conclusion of this sort, and that a partial reliance upon your moral character has betrayed you beyond the depth of your understanding. You have now carried things too far to retreat. You have plainly declared to the people what they are to expect from the continuance of your administration. It is time for your Grace to consider what you also may expect in return from their spirit and their resentment.

Since the accession of our most gracious sovereign to the throne we have seen a system of government which may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all denominations have been employed and dismissed. The advice of the ablest men in this country has been repeatedly called for and rejected; and when the royal displeasure has been signified to a minister, the marks of it have usually been proportioned to his abilities and integrity. The spirit of the FAVORITE has some apparent influence upon every administration; and every set of ministers preserved an appearance of duration, as long as they submitted to that influence. But there were certain services to be performed for the favorite's security, or to gratify his resentments, which your predecessors in office had the wisdom or the virtue not to undertake. The moment this refractory spirit was discovered their disgrace was determined. Lord Chatham, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Rockingham have successively had the honor to be dismissed for preferring their duty as servants of the public to those compliances which were expected from their station. A submissive administration was at last gradually collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and connections; and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my Lord, for thou art the man. Lord Bute found no resource of dependence or security in the proud, imposing superiority of Lord Chatham's abilities, the shrewd, inflexible judgment of Mr.

Grenville, nor in the mild but determined integrity of Lord Rockingham. His views and situation required a creature void of all these properties; and he was forced to go through every division, resolution, composition, and refinement of political chemistry before he happily arrived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in your Grace. Flat and insipid in your retired state, but, brought into action, you become vitriol again. Such are the extremes of alternate indolence of fury which have governed your whole administration. Your circumstances with regard to the people soon becoming desperate, like other honest servants you determined to involve the best of masters in the same difficulties with yourself. We owe it to your Grace's well-directed labors that your sovereign has been persuaded to doubt of the affections of his subjects, and the people to suspect the virtues of their sovereign at a time when both were unquestionable. You have degraded the royal dignity into a base, dishonorable competition with Mr. Wilkes, nor had you abilities to carry even this last contemptible triumph over a private man, without the grossest violation of the fundamental laws of the constitution and rights of the people. But these are rights, my Lord, which you can no more annihilate than you can the soil to which they are annexed. The question no longer turns upon points of national honor and security abroad, or on the degrees of expedience and propriety of measures at home. It was not inconsistent that you should abandon the cause of liberty in another country, which you had persecuted in your own; and in the common arts of domestic corruption we miss no part of Sir Robert Walpole's system except his abilities. In this humble imitative line you might long have proceeded, safe and contemptible. You might, probably, never have risen to the dignity of being hated, and even have been despised with moderation. But it seems you meant to be distinguished, and, to a mind like yours, there was no other road to fame but by the destruction of a noble fabric, which you thought had been too long the admiration of mankind. The use you have made of the military force introduced an alarming change in the mode of executing the laws. The arbitrary appointment of Mr. Luttrell invades the foundation of the laws themselves, as it manifestly transfers the right of legislation from those whom the people have chosen to those whom they have rejected. With a succession of such appointments we may soon see a House of Commons collected, in the choice of